Tektronix DMM 4050 Serial connection with LabVIEW 2024Q3 + Windows11

[complexation]

Having difficulty interfacing the DMM4050 with LabVIEW after installing the most recent drivers. The drivers are downloaded following the 'find instrument drivers' command, so clearly the device is recognized. The drivers are installed correctly as the Instrument I/O / Instr Drivers/ TEK4050 populates. Not sure if the hardware is too outdated to use with Windows 11, as their instruction manual mentions specific OS versions. I appreciate any and all help. I'm using a simple VI to read AC Voltage from electrodes, using a waveform graph after serial initialization. The VI times out before any data is read and plotted. 

[ShockHouse]

It doesn't sound like a driver issue. You shouldn't have any issues talking to that device with Windows 11 and LabVIEW 2024 Q3. You mentioned Serial, so are you using the USB to RS-232 Interface Cable? Have you set up or looked in NI Max to see what the VISA Connection Alias is and used it as the input in your code for connecting.

[Kyle97330]

One of the advantages to using anything that isn't USB is that your device should be OS-independent.  If they mention a specific OS in the manual somewhere then they are likely referring to control software that they developed and released as an EXE, not the ability to write LabVIEW (or any other language) code to interface with it yourself.

Can you post the non-working example code?  Including screenshots AND a VI file download would be best.

Serial is a completely "dumb" bus.  You have to be sure that both ends of it are set up exactly right.  If you don't match things like baud rate and flow control settings, then you get the appearance of complete communications failure.

[complexation]

Im using a third party Startech USB to RS232 interface box. I reconfigured the RS232 connection settings in NI Max which was helpful, and how I am sending/receiving signals (the RX/TX lights on the interface box light up). However, the VI still times out before any data is plotted on the waveform graph.

[complexation]

Baud rate on the instrument, NI, Device manager and initialize code block all match. Attached are an example of the code and the VI itself. Thanks for your help, I am still very new to LabVIEW.

[Kyle97330]

Well, I would start by doing the following:

Move the Initialize VI out of the loop to the left, so it only runs once, not every loop

Move the Close VI out of the loop to the right, so it only runs once at the end

Add an "OR" node between your stop button and the loop end terminal.  Keep one input on the stop button, and on the other input put the error wire from the error check VI output.

Add an indicator for the error wire after the Close VI so you can see what error (if any) goes on that wire.

Consider changing from a "Waveform graph" to a "waveform chart".  A graph completely removes old data each time it gets new data wired into it, so each time your loop runs as-is it will erase itself and only show the last values.  A chart has built-in memory, so each time it gets new data wired in it adds that to the previous data without deleting it until it hits its max history length (defaults to 1024).

Once you do all that, report back, especially with whatever error you get on the error output indicator, including both the number and the complete text.